VIRGINIA BEACH - A woman who was
pulled from her burning home Saturday after desperate rescue efforts
by neighbors and firefighters has died.

A firefighter who tried to save
her was injured and is recovering.

The victim, identified Sunday as
Patricia H. Winstead, 70, died after arriving at Sentara Virginia
Beach General Hospital.

Her husband, William T. Winstead,
69, who also was pulled from the fire and suffered a heart attack,
was listed in critical condition Sunday at the hospital. Neighbors
said he is a retired First Colonial High School teacher.

The blaze was reported about 5
p.m. in the 3200 block of Lark St. in the Princess Anne Plaza
neighborhood, Battalion Chief David Hutcheson said.

A neighbor said he thinks the
woman may have been the first to call for help.

Instead of escaping, he thinks
she gave her life trying to rescue her husband, for whom she had
long cared .

"He was totally dependent on her
for everything," said Josh Zwirn, 29, a city public works employee
who lives across the street .

Zwirn said he was the first to
reach the couple's front steps when smoke started spreading across
the neighborhood .

He said he found the Winstead's
cordless phone dropped outside the front door.

"She came out, she called 911
and she went back in to help," Zwirn said. "I'm sure. … With all
that smoke, she didn't have a chance. I don't know how she got back
in there."

Zwirn said he ducked the
increasingly heavy smoke coming out the front door and started
hollering. After a few shouts, she answered.

"I could hear her over the
crackling and everything else," Zwirn said. "She was probably about
nine, 10 feet away in the hallway. But with all that smoke pouring
out, it seemed like a mile away."

"She told me, 'Help! I can't
move,' and then, 'Help!' one more time," Zwirn said, "and then it
kind of went faint."

The smoke and heat were too much
for him to move in. Another neighbor, armed with wet rags over his
face, tried to get in, Zwirn said.

Zwirn then ran to the back of
the home, believing William Winstead might be in his bedroom .

"I beat the glass in with my
hand like an idiot," said Zwirn, who cut himself. "Then I found a
board."

After breaking the glass, he
yelled inside.

"Sure enough, he was laying on
the bed, saying, 'Help.' I said, 'Can you get to the window?'" But
the man said he couldn't move.

"He's yelling 'help' while I'm
beating the window in," Zwirn said, his voice cracking briefly as he
recounted the moment.

Unable to break enough of the
window to get in, Zwirn grabbed a nearby garden hose .

He hooked it up and turned it
on, but it was old. No water came from the nozzle.

"By then, the back was engulfed"
in smoke and flame, Zwirn said. That's when a firefighter grabbed
him and told him to get to safety.

Zwirn told the firefighter where
the man was and retreated.

"That's all I could do," Zwirn
said. "I got answers from both of them, that was the hard part."

By the time firefighters
arrived, four minutes after the first calls came in, the home was
largely overrun by flames.

"It wasn't your normal room and
contents fire," Hutcheson said. "The whole left side of the
structure was on fire. It was up in the attic and burning through
the roof."

Crews fought their way inside
within minutes to reach the trapped couple.

"One crew was holding the fire
in check," training a hose on the house, Hutcheson said, while "the
other crews were searching."

In the process, "some of the
ceiling gave way" and fell on one firefighter, Hutcheson said. That
knocked the man's breathing mask off "and he got a couple breaths of
the heated gases."

The firefighter was taken to
Sentara Virginia Beach General for treatment and was released,
Hutcheson said. Hutcheson did not identify him .

"They did everything they
could," Hutcheson said. "These guys put it on the line and took a
lot of heat to try and get to them."

About 30 firefighters, five
engine trucks and two ladder trucks responded to the blaze.

Once rescue crews found the
couple, they pulled them outside. Both had stopped breathing and
paramedics immediately began performing CPR .

"They took them all the way to
the hospital performing CPR," Hutcheson said. "Enroute, they got
pulses back" on the Winsteads .

The home was gutted.

Fire investigators made an
initial survey Saturday night and returned to the scene after things
had cooled down Sunday. There was still no word on a cause. The
fire is believed to have started in the living room, Hutcheson said.

Zwirn on Sunday said he was
trying to feel glad that William Winstead was holding on, but he
couldn't help but wonder who would care for the man now.

"She was the stronger one,"
Zwirn said of Patricia Winstead . "But she is the one who didn't
make it."